The present invention provides an apparatus for manufacturing the cups of a brassiere from a fabric of synthetic material, said apparatus comprising a frame with members which stretch, and/or clamp and/or transport the fabric between a mould, which may be moved up and down, and a supporting rim mounted below the mould and cooperating therewith, while further means separate the cups, formed by the mould, from the remaining fabric.
In operation, the fabric is clamped in a plane and intermittently moved on to be clamped, at successive stations, between the mould and the supporting rim, during which a cup is formed in the fabric by the oil-heated mould. Having moulded the cup into the stretched fabric, the mould is drawn back to some extent, after which air is drawn from above the supporting rim through the space between the cup and the mould and through the cup itself to cool it. After being cooled, the cup may be separated from the remaining fabric in various ways.
In one embodiment of the invented apparatus, the cup may be separated from the remaining fabric band by means of a cutting die cooperating with a supporting plate provided with an opening through which the mould may pass, which opening forms the supporting rim cooperating with the mould. In such embodiment, the cutting edge of the cutting die as well as the supporting plate and the supporting rim extend in a flat plane. This results in the disadvantage, that a perfect shape of the cups cannot be obtained. In a preferred embodiment of the invented apparatus, the supporting rim extends three-dimensionally. According to the invention, this three-dimensionally extending supporting rim, which cooperates with the mould, may be formed by the end-rim of a tube- or cylindrically-shaped element. On forming the cup according to this embodiment of the invention, the heated mould is moved downwardly against the fabric stretched between two clamping plates and then in abutment with the upper rim of the tube- or cylindrically-shaped element, during which the synthetic fabric adjusts itself to the mould, and finally is clamped between the mould and the spatially extending supporting rim.
Preferably the tube- or cylindrically-shaped element may be connected at the side facing away from the mould, to a suction pipe or duct through which the cups, after being separated from the starting fabric, may be extracted and carried off.
Separating the moulded cups along the spatially extending supporting rim would require a spatially extending cutting edge cooperating with a likewise spatially extending cutting plate. To overcome this problem, according to the preferred embodiment of the invented apparatus, a substantially closed and ring shaped, electrical heating element is mounted around the tube- or cylindrically-shaped element and means is provided to move the heating element up and down along the tubular element and past its upper rim. Having moulded the cup, the heated mould is drawn back from the cup which then is cooled by cooling air, after which the electrical heating element is brought upwardly against and past the fabric, as a result of which the cup is separated from the fabric band by the melting of the fabric at the locations of its contact with the heating element.
To clamp the fabric all round the mould, two cooperating clamping plates are provided, at least one of which is provided with a resilient or elastic layer. Preferably, the cooperating faces of the clamping plates are profiled. By applying these profiled clamping plates, by means of which the fabric to be processed may be clamped in a three-dimensional manner underneath the mould, a completely spatial shaping of the cup may be obtained.
Other objects and advantages will be apparent from the following description and from the drawings.